Introduction&Methods

Introduction

              A lot of students are involved in numerous activities. Between playing sports, being in choir, having a job, or even being in marching band, there are extracurricular activities for pretty much anyone. Some extracurriculars can help you get into college by looking good on applications and some are simply just for fun. The report conducted here is Does being involved in extracurricular activities effect GPA? A survey was done to see the results of how students do academically when involved in various amounts of activities. Academics can affect what you end up doing with your life and can be a crucial part of some people’s lives. On the other hand, sometimes the extracurricular activities someone is involved in can also determine one’s future life. So, this leads to the question of whether being involved in extracurriculars can affect one’s GPA, positively or negatively.

              Sera Rivers wrote about extracurricular activities and academic grades and stated that “Various studies have shown that students who participate in extracurricular activities excel in academic performance more often than children who do not.”  (www.classroom.synonym.com). In this article, it is discussed that being involved in extracurriculars does benefit one’s academic success. Being able to participate in extracurriculars typically requires a student to do well in the classroom which also improves attendance rate according to The National Center for Education Statistics. Further, the article explains that being involved in extracurriculars gives you a better GPA, improves your social engagements, and improves one’s college opportunities.

Methods

Participants: Those who participated in this study were anyone ages 13 and older that are taking any number of classes. They took the survey in the fall semester of 2018.

Procedure: Those who participated were asked to complete and online, anonymous, survey. They were asked a series of five questions about the correlation of being involved in extracurricular activities and GPA. The first question started the survey out simply by asking “How old are you?”, with options of 13-15, 16-18, 19-21, 22+. The second question then went on to ask gender, giving them options of male, female, transgender male, transgender female, other, and prefer not to say. The third question then went onto ask “How many extracurricular activities are you involved in? (jobs, sports, music, etc.)”. This question had four options, 0-1, 2-3, 4-5, or 6+. The fourth question went into further detail, asking “Are you involved in:” with the options being sport(s), music, both, and neither. Finally, the fifth question asked for the participants GPA, giving them ranges of 0.0-1.5, 1.6-2.5, 2.6-3.5, 3.6-4.0, and 4.1+. This survey was done through a website called surveymonkey.com and the link was posted publicly to Facebook and Twitter and was also posted to RHET: class blog. The survey was available to participants for five days.

Data Analysis: The end results that were obtained by the survey were converted into percentages. The percentages were put into bar graphs as well as scatterplots to express the data obtained. The two questions that were prominently important were the third and fifth question. These two questions go into more depth to express any correlation between being involved in extracurricular activities and GPA.